Friday, March 31, 2017

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

It’s a grey day, and the house is quiet since my California family (with
my ten-year-old granddaughter) went back home.
Last night I got to talk to her on FaceTime, and after the usual
questions about school and friends, she amused herself and me by making up an alternative
history of the world.

She described the dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Dark
Ages, the Renaissance, and Christopher Columbus as if they’d all happened in
the 20th century and their recurring source of despair was that they
all had to use old-fashioned flip phones.
I got into it too; it was silly
and fun. For some reason, she thinks
flip phones are an automatically funny concept.

Last week, when she was here, she had me stretching more than my
imagination. I stretched my legs,
walking to the park with her and her father.
I haven’t walked much since my
knee injury, and it was slow progress, but it was good for me. With her gone, I feel restless, and have a hard
time keeping my mind on my work. The
gathering clouds outside reinforce a sense of gloom.

Could be that the sun in Aries, the springtime sign, is making me
restless? April often gives this desire
to rush at life, and limits can make you chafe.
But why do I feel so limited? - I ask myself.

Ah, yes, it’s not just me. Venus
is entering a time of sadness. She is
moving very slowly all this month, as she changes directions. The thing is that the planet of love has
chosen a tricky spot to do this, right at the square to Saturn, the planet of
time, structure, discipline and restriction.

A hard Venus/Saturn aspect generally comes around every three months,
and lasts three or four days. During
those days, we may feel a little lackluster, and have a harder time getting
whatever we want. Some pleasurable plans
may not work out, and we might find ourselves spending the evening scrubbing
the kitchen floor instead. But a few
days later, we’re back having more fun.

This Venus/Saturn square, however, is long and drawn-out, and will
cover most of April. It will be in orb
between April 3 and 27. During this
time, Venus and Saturn challenge each other, with Venus trying to lighten
things up at the same time that Saturn keeps reminding you how heavy they
are.

The aspect brings up recurring questions about desire and frustration,
joy and fear, love and obligation. What
do we want? Are we really entitled to
it? Are we being selfish? Are other people being selfish? (And if they are, can we sue? Remember Jupiter is in Libra, the sign of
law.) Is it safe to fall in love? Can
other people know us, as we truly are?
Can we know them? Why don’t we
get what we want when we want it? Why do
we have to wait?

Venus is all about the search for happiness, but Saturn hobbles that
search, often from an excess of worry about what the future might hold. Saturn represents the weight of past experience,
especially old trauma, and so it tends to hold us back from risk. Most of us have felt pain, and retreated from
it, and we don’t want to feel it again.
Not only are we not going to touch that hot stove again, we’re going to
stay completely out of the kitchen, even if it means we don’t get any
cookies.

Saturn also represents old structures, traditions, walls and barriers,
which do not yield easily to change, especially frivolous change. And isn’t happiness always frivolous, a
passing giggle in this serious slog called life? Or - is
it something essential, the heart that keeps beating and gives us energy to
navigate the walls and fences around us?

This Venus/Saturn square isn’t the only stagnating influence in April. Mercury in Taurus is also moving slowly as the
month begins, and it retrogrades on April 9.
At this point, the deliberate,
cautious energy of Taurus becomes even more deliberate. Will anything get done this month? Some old stuff could be fixed, organized,
sorted out, put away. With Mercury retrograde
in earthy Taurus, you can get back to some old projects that you put aside,
like building those window boxes, or cleaning out your garage.

Then things are bogged down further between April 15 and 20, since
there’s an inconjunct between Mars (planet of action) and Saturn. Mars, like Mercury, is in slow, thorough
Taurus, and normally you can get quite a lot done with Mars here. It gives a more natural, instinctive approach
– but Saturn is too rule-bound to let
you do things organically. It’s hard to
find the right rhythm, the pace that works.

During April, things that would normally take days take weeks, and many
things go unresolved. Instead of breaking out of your winter doldrums, you may
find yourself brooding, planning and preparing for some hypothetical
future event. Seeds, normally so eager
to sprout in April, seem to be taking an extra month underground this
year. And even if everything is budding
on cue outside, you may not feel that quickening inside your own soul.

Through the blockages, obfuscations and disappointments of April,
everyone gradually goes to sleep. They keep on working in their sleep, the way
you do when you’re not feeling particularly hopeful. Things
do pick up a little after April 20, when Mercury re-enters Aries, a speedier
sign, and there’s a little more chance of action. But Mercury is still retrograde, and it isn’t
yet time to take off in a new direction.

Mercury meets Saturn too, but in a more constructive relationship, a
trine. This will be in orb between April
21 and 28, and it makes for a bit more efficiency. There will be some successes – not quick or
flashy, but perhaps the culmination of months of careful, meticulous planning,
with an eye to the bigger picture. The Venus/Saturn
square will still be in orb, though, so there won’t be much celebration. A few wins may go largely unnoticed, but they
will be something you can build on in the future.

And then the month ends with Mercury meeting Uranus, planet of abrupt change. So suddenly, after this long slow drawl of a
month, everything is going to be upended right as April ends. Suddenly, we’ll all be startled awake by some
development we didn’t expect.

And do all these April blockages mean that Neil Gorsuch won’t be
confirmed? Unfortunately, I think he
probably will. Currently, he has some
lucky aspects - Jupiter sextile his
natal Jupiter, Pluto trine his natal Pluto. These are the kinds of aspects that give you a
professional growth-spurt. Saturn isn’t
making any aspects to his chart as all, so he has very little to worry
about. The rest of us do, but not
him.

The only positive thing I can say about this is that his natal chart is
full of mutable signs, so he’s more malleable than he appears. In fact, mentally, he’s on the skittish side,
and he may suffer from hypochondria and anxiety. So he won’t be the steadiest justice on the
court, and he may be influenced by the other justices more than you would
think, whether for good or ill.

Trump’s luck is holding for now too, as Jupiter retrogrades and then
goes direct over his natal Jupiter. It
won’t be till August that his luck runs out.
Right now, resistance is like digging a big hole in the ground, a time-consuming
and dirty job. Sooner or later, Trump
and his gilded throne will fall into it.
For now, we’ll have to accept that this administration, as messy and
awkward as it appears, isn’t going anywhere immediately.

In April, it may feel like you’re on a time-loop, sometimes moving an
inch forward, but quite often going backwards.
Things are done, and things are undone, and nothing seems to budge. It can seem interminable. And all the time, we can feel burdened by the
challenges we’re not facing, the earth we’re not protecting, the future
generations who might blame us for not doing enough.

What will people remember of all this?
Maybe next month, we’ll be too busy to consider this, but now we can
pause. Pausing is what we do best this
month. And as we do, we can store away
these memories - the earth, our loved ones, our bodies, the age we live in. It’s just a trinket on the charm bracelet of
the passing centuries. But it’s all we
have, right now.